Engineered Viruses to Kill Cancer

May 21, 20140
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A recent
study from the Mayo Clinic has reported the first well-documented case of
complete remission of disseminated cancer by oncolytic virotherapy - fighting
off cancer using re-engineered viruses.

Stacy Erholtz, a 50-year-old woman had been battling
myeloma, a cancer that affects bone marrow, for years. The tumours started growing all over the body and especially, a
tumour growing on her forehead had been pushing on her brain by destroying a
bone in the skull.

Having been through chemotherapy and a couple of stem cell transplants, she had few options left.

The clinicians at the Mayo Clinic,
as part of a proof-of-principle clinical trial, injected her with 100 billion
units of measles virus, which would be enough to inoculate 10 million people,
had it been used as vaccine. However, the virus had been engineered
appropriately for anti-cancer treatment. Erholtz experienced unbearable
headache, shaking, vomiting and very high fever during and after the infusion. However, about
36-hours following infusion of virus, the tumour in forehead started shrinking
and in the next few weeks it disappeared completely. Over the period of time,
the other tumours in her body disappeared too and her cancer went into
remission.

Regarding
the mechanism of action of this anti-cancer action by the viruses, the
scientists believe that the viruses use the tumours as hosts to replicate
leading to killing of cancer cells in the process of releasing the viruses. Though
this treatment was successful on only one of the 2 patients, it is too early to
be optimistic and this study needs to be confirmed in larger randomized
clinical trials.